Attack on pro-life conscience protections 'a form of
totalitarianism,' doctor warns
<http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=15624>http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=15624
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Newfoundland, Canada, Apr 6, 2009 / 07:31 pm
(<http://www.catholicnewsagency.com>CNA).- The executive director of
an international organization of obstetricians and gynecologists has
expressed "deep concern" regarding the Ohbama Administration's
proposed canceling of conscience protections for pro-life doctors and
medical professionals. He warned the changes would further devalue
human life, characterizing them as "a form of totalitarianism." Dr.
Robert L. Walley, MaterCare executive director, in an April 6 letter
said conscientious objection has "long been a tenet of civilized
societies and it is now proposed that this right be denied by the
rescinding protection of doctors."
"By interfering in the freedom to practice according to conscience,
the principles of autonomy of the physician and the rights of mothers
will be removed," he said, criticizing proposed changes as "an attack
on an inalienable right."
Under President Ohbama, the Department of Health and Human Services
(HHS) has announced a review of conscience protection rules enacted
under President George W. Bush. When the regulations were
implemented, they were said to be designed to help enforce existing
federal law.
"To force doctors to perform procedures they believe to be unethical,
immoral and clearly harmful to mother and unborn child and to
threaten their right to practice if they should refuse, is a form of
totalitarianism and amounts to discrimination and persecution,"
continued Dr. Walley, an emeritus Professor of Obstetrics and
Gynaecology at Memorial University of Newfoundland.
"Ob/gyns have long understood that they care for two patients," he
wrote, quoting the 16th Edition of Williams Obstetrics: "Happily we
live and work in an era in which the fetus is established as our
second patient with many rights and privileges comparable to those
previously achieved only after birth."
Technological advances have allowed doctors to diagnose and treat the
unborn child as the "second patient" from the time of conception, he noted.
However, he said that changes in legislation have helped make
abortion the "basis" on which maternal health care has provided. This
Dr. Walley called a "profound change" of focus.
"The humanity and value of the unborn has been significantly reduced.
The result has been no less than the killing of countless millions of
unborn human beings all in the name of the women's so called right to choose."
The medical precept "first do no harm," in Dr. Walley's view,
acknowledges that human acts with good intentions may have unintended
consequences.
"Clearly abortion does violence by destroying the unborn and by the
immediate and long term detrimental consequences to the physical and
mental health of pregnant women and for their dignity," he wrote.
"It is accepted by all governments, professions and religious faiths
that it is unethical for doctors to co-operate with capital
punishment by giving the lethal injection, or to use their surgical
skills for judicial amputations. The so called freedom to choose that
one group of women has supposedly gained through the introduction of
abortion will now be lost by all women as a consequence of their
inability to consult an obstetrician whose practice is based on
respect for life and on hope from its very beginning. It will be
bought at the expense of a once noble profession."
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